Why I Still Believe — and Why I Left the Baptists Behind
I’m not a Christian just because I was raised one.
I’m not here out of habit or blind tradition. I don’t follow Jesus because it’s easy or convenient. I believe because I’ve seen things — experienced things — that no science, no psychology, no skeptic could ever explain away.
I’ve seen spirits. I’ve seen the shadow people — felt their presence, their awareness. And I’ve had dreams so vivid, so lucid, that I don’t even call them dreams anymore. I’ve spoken with my grandfather, long dead, and it wasn’t just memory or longing. He looked at me. He spoke to me. And I remember every word.
I can’t prove what I experienced. I’m not asking anyone to believe me. But I know what I saw. I know what I felt. And that’s why I still believe — because something beyond this world touched my life. And it changed me forever.
But belief in God is not the same as loyalty to a church.
For 23 years, I was part of the Southern Baptist tradition. I grew up in that world — 1990s, early 2000s — hearing the usual sermons: “Love thy neighbor,” “Love God,” “Jesus saves.” And as a kid, I believed that. I wanted to believe the message of love and grace.
But by the late 2000s, something shifted. Or maybe I just started seeing things for what they really were.
Suddenly, Jesus was being used to justify hate — hate against Muslims, against the LGBT community, against liberals, against Obama, against anyone who didn’t fit their mold. And sometimes, the racism wasn’t even subtle. I started to ask: how can a church preach about the love of Christ and turn around to spit venom at “the other”?
Then came 2015. Obergefell v. Hodges. Gay marriage was legalized across the U.S., and Protestant churches — after decades of saying they’d “stay out of politics” — exploded with rage. The sermons were full of condemnation, not compassion. I’m not gay, but the hatred they spewed sounded exactly like the hate I used to hear from the bullies who tormented me in school. The same tone. The same cruelty. And I thought: I can’t be part of this anymore.
The last straw? The way churches like Westboro dragged the word “Baptist” through the mud, turning it into a symbol of bigotry and cruelty.
By 2016, I felt like I had no place in God’s world. I felt alone. Like maybe faith was just another excuse people used to hate each other.
But then I started hearing the voice of someone different. Someone who didn’t sound like the preachers I grew up with.
In 2013, he said five words that began to change everything for me: “Who am I to judge?” When he spoke about compassion, about the marginalized, about embracing the broken and the different — even gays — something inside me stirred. Even though I’m straight, his words touched something in me that had been ignored by the church of my youth.
So on February 5, 2017, I walked into a Catholic Church for the first time in my life.
And I’ve never looked back.
That church, that moment, that grace — it reminded me why I believed in the first place. Not because of fear. Not because of tradition. But because God is real. Because Christ’s love is real. And because I have seen and felt things no one can take away from me.
I can only hope Pope Leo lives up to Pope Francis’ example — of humility, of kindness, of mercy.
I didn’t leave the Southern Baptist Church because I lost my faith.
I left because I found it.
